World-renowned Kenyan artist Magdalene Odundo is appointed Chancellor of the prestigious University of Creative Arts. The professor of ceramics, who previously studied at the London institution, will succeed Dame Zandra Rhodes in June 2018.
An excited Odundo couldn’t help but show how lucky she is to have the opportunity to serve the people of Kenya
“It is an honor to be invited to continue my relationship with a university with which I have had close ties for many years,” said Odundo.
Magdalene Odundo Bio
Born in 1950 in Nairobi, Kenya as Studio Potter Magdalene Anyango Namakhiya Odundo attended her elementary and early education in both Kenya and India, after which she immersed herself in the creative arts when she majored in Graphic and Commercial Arts at Nairobi Polytechnic in 1970.
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She later moved to London to pursue higher education, where she studied at various institutions including Cambridge College of Art. Gaining a wealth of multidisciplinary experience, she began teaching at the Commonwealth Institute in London after graduating in 3D design in 1976.
Magdalene Odundo later joined the Royal College of Art, where she completed her Masters before becoming Professor of Ceramics at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design in 2001.
Odundo has received high praise for her exhibitions and contribution to creative arts throughout her career. In 2008 Professor Odundo was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to the arts by Queen Victoria.
She also received the African Art Award in Detroit from the Detroit Art Institute’s Friends of African and African American Art, making her one of the few African artists to have achieved the milestone.
In March 2016, she was inaugurated as Professor Emeritus at UCA with a ceremony on the Farnham campus. She lives and works in Surrey.
The highly qualified scholar and professor, she retired from teaching in 2016, although her work continues to be exhibited around the world. She is currently part of the British Studio Pottery exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art, which runs from September to 3 December 2017.
Short facts about Magdalene Odundo
Magdalene Odundo is considered one of Kenya’s prime revelations on the world stage, second only to President Barrack Obama of the United States. She is an authority in the world of culture and art.
Known for her handmade ceramic works, Odundo uses a winding technique. Your pieces will be blued, slip plated and then re-blued. In a process known as reduction firing, she fires her pieces in an oxidizing atmosphere, giving them a red-orange tint.
If the pottery is fired a second time in a low-oxygen environment, the clay will turn black.
Their techniques are said to resemble those used by the ancient Greeks and Romans. She is also said to incorporate influences from China and Mexico into her work, where she designs her work with human forms such as the shapes of the head, the curves of the hips and the spine, etc.
Her pieces are in high demand and need a lot. When major art collectors from around the world order a certain type of artwork from her, they have to wait up to six to eight months to receive it.
Her work can be seen in the exhibition in renowned museums such as the Museum of Mankind in Great Britain, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the National Design Museum as well as the Smithsonian Museum in New York.
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Other museums that showcase their work are well-respected, such as the Art Institute of Chicago. Her plays are typically steeped in African and particularly Kenyan symbolism and ritual.